Dell Latitude E7240 touchpad test

Touchpad test of the premium ultrabook Dell Latitude E7240

My Dell Latitude E7240 touchpad - tested

Dell Latitude E7240 is one of the most expensive machines in Dell's premium line of light and portable laptops. The E7240 offers great performance on the go and is one of the preferred business ultrabooks these days. That is the reason why we decided to make an in-depth test of its touchpad which role is extremely important when doing business from your mobile computing device.

First impressions

I myself have been using the Latitude E7240 extensively these days and didn't have any mouse plugged in the computer so I was entirely counting on the built-in touchpad. My first impressions from its performance were good but not great though, The touchpad is pretty accurate but doesn't provide the best feedback in this class. I should remind you that the configuration I am using costs almost $2000 so we should be pretty demanding when discussing any of the components of this Dell ultrabook.

No multi-touch

Dell Latitude E7240 touchpad doesn't support mulit-touch

I was also very surprise to find that the touchpad itself doesn't support multi-touch which for me is really strange. I guess Dell had anything in mind when taking the decision not to implement multitouch functionality in the E7240 touchpad but I would really prefer to have it on board. The Latitude E7240 doesn't offer trackpad even as an option which is also a bit disappointing as many business users are used to having it on their expensive laptops.

Edit: After installing Dell Touchpad drivers and software the additional features like pinch to zoom and some others are now available.

Seperate touchpad keys

Dell Latitude E7240 touchpad keys

Thankfully Dell separated the touchpad keys from the touchpad itself and believe me that makes a huge difference. This way we avoid the common scenario of accidentally hitting any of the two buttons. On the other hand the feeling of pressing these hardware buttons is much better than having them built in the touchpad so I really like the fact that they have these buttons separated.

Verdict

Dell Latitude E7240 has a very user friendly touchpad which is quite good for daily activities but it lacks some important features like multi-touch and pinch to zoom. There is also room for improvement in the accuracy of the touchpad.

All this means that my old favorite touchpad in the HP EliteBook is still the best in class offering great feel and accuracy and has very usable trackpad with two separate hardware keys under the keyboard in addition.